Geena Davis Is Back: Netflix’s ‘The Boroughs’ Role She Was Born to Play

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Editor’s Note: This conversation has been edited and condensed for publication.

This show is fantastic. And having you in anything is just so exciting. Was The Boroughs an immediate yes?

Oh, god, yes. I read the script first, of course, but it seemed tailor-made for me. It’s exactly the kind of character I love, a strong one who’s self-determining. A lot of the characters I’ve played are further along in the journey toward saying what you think in the moment, just bolder. My memoir is called Dying of Politeness, which I was. [laughs] But Renee’s not dying of politeness.

I’ve seen basically everything you’ve done, and there are bits of the Geena we know and love in this character. There’s steamy Geena, there’s Thelma and Louise Geena, there’s fighter Geena. What was it like touching on those bits of what you’ve done over the years?

This show has the steamiest scenes I’ve ever done. I’m 70, so, you know, it was about time.

I don’t know, that Brad Pitt scene was up there.

Oh, hang on. That scene! How could I forget? [laughs]

But Renee is fully realized, she’s sexual, she’s funny, she’s a little weird, she’s all of the things. What is it about Renee that stood out to you?

Exactly what you said, that she feels free to be herself, and she is herself. For me, the journey to becoming my real self has taken a long time, and Renee has found that. She definitely has, and has had a nice effect on herself all along.

There’s something in this story about the chasing of youth in our culture, and yet Renee doesn’t seem too afraid of getting older. Her getting older hasn’t changed who she is or what she wants to do.

Right, exactly. She does what she wants and knows what it is she wants to do. I’ve found something similar in my own life. You picture what you’re gonna be like when you’re 50, or what will I be like on New Year’s Eve 1999? When I was a little kid, I had this whole image in my head. I was going to have my hair in a French twist, be holding a cocktail, having fun, much more sophisticated than I was at the time. But my point is, you get to that age and you don’t feel different. It’s not like you’re actually different. It’s still you. So you’re like, oh, I thought this was gonna be weird. It’s just not.

What did you end up doing on New Year’s 1999?

I organized a fabulous party. We put platforms over somebody’s pool, had a tent, it was a costume ball. I had people come over and set up crafts to make masks, we all took ballroom dancing lessons. But then I hired ringers who knew how to dance really well to help us out. And we served breakfast at three o’clock.

This cast is just delicious. And now I know you and Alfre Woodard worked together on a short-lived sitcom called Sara in 1985. How wild is it that you haven’t worked together since?

We’ve seen each other here and there, but no. It was a weird experience, didn’t survive. But I got to know Alfre and work with her, which was so much fun.

Watching that sitcom and then The Boroughs at the same time, it struck me that if Sara had been a huge success, your career would have been very different. You’re now an Oscar winner, an honorary Oscar recipient, with this incredible impact on pop culture. Do you ever look back on those moments and think things could have gone very differently?

I’ve never thought about it in that specific way, that if something had survived or if something had never happened, how would that change my life? But that’s kind of an interesting thing to think about.

What is it like to receive that acclaim from fans who get excited about your new work but then also want to go back and experience everything else you’ve done?

If somebody likes something that I did, that’s wonderful. I’m very appreciative of that. But I’ve had a few movies that lived far beyond what we expected. In the ’80s and early ’90s, we didn’t know anything about that, movies going to video, then DVD, then streaming. Thelma & Louise and A League of Their Own and Beetlejuice have all lived for decades, so it’s fun.

For fans, there’s such a deep emotional connection to your work. Do you feel that when you meet people?

Yes, definitely. I meet people who have your take on it, that it’s the body of work that they love. That means a lot.

There was a moment where we weren’t getting a lot of Geena Davis, and it really bothered me. What was that experience like?

It was not good. I had already been in some really good, interesting movies. When I first started out, I heard this rumor that once you turn 40, you don’t get hired anymore. And this was when Meryl Streep was winning all these Oscars, and Glenn Close and Sally Field. I was like, whoa, that won’t be true of them. So they’ll change everything and that’ll be fine. But in my 40s, I made one movie, where I had been making about a movie a year, and I was very picky about that. It was like, what the hell happened? It was really stunning. And then people assumed I wasn’t working because I had kids. But when you’re an actor, you can bring the kids to the set, you can do whatever you want. So yeah, it was very discouraging.

You turned that discouraging period into something that pushed the study of how women are cast in Hollywood with the Geena Davis Institute, and then received an honorary Oscar for that work. That must be a special point in your career.

Yeah, it really is. And it was all because of my little toddler daughter. I realized one day I could start showing her preschool shows. I picked one I thought would be very good, turned it on, and within five or ten minutes I was like, how many female characters are in this? And I saw it everywhere, in videos we rented, in movies we saw. But what happened was, whenever I had a meeting with anyone in my industry, I would say, hey, have you ever noticed how few female characters there are in movies made for kids? And every single person said, that’s not true anymore, that’s been fixed, and they would name a movie with one female character as proof. So I realized, okay, this is utterly unconscious. People make kids’ entertainment because they love kids. If I get the data, I don’t have to educate the public, I don’t have to rise up. I can go directly to the creators and share it with them, and it worked like a charm.

Are you seeing that work make a difference now?

Yeah, definitely. In children’s TV and children’s movies, we’ve pretty much reached parity in male and female characters, and it was wildly not that before. Because they want to do right by kids, and now they have the evidence.

Last thing, and it’s more of a thank you. You are the person who saves me from every boring conversation. Whenever things get stale, I drop, “Did you know Geena Davis was almost in the Olympics for archery?” and it changes everything. And you took up archery in your 40s, during that fallow period, and nearly qualified. Thank you for that gift.

I know, I know. I took it up in my 40s during that fallow period and became obsessed. Yeah, it was incredible.